


Elven Glory, Dwarven Pride

by Cartadwarfwithaheartofgold (manka)



Series: Manka Writes Friend Fiction [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst and Porn, Biting, Clothed Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Female Cadash/Varric Tethras - Freeform, Kissing, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Sex in an Elven Temple, Size Difference, Solas has a size kink, Solas hates the Evanuris, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:15:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28679484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manka/pseuds/Cartadwarfwithaheartofgold
Summary: After the reappearance of Bianca Davri ends the relationship between Maria Cadash and Varric Tethras, Solas is there to pick up the pieces just as he's been longing to do. The perfect opportunity occurs during a trip alone to explore and Elven Ruin.
Relationships: Female Cadash/Solas (Dragon Age), Female Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age)
Series: Manka Writes Friend Fiction [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2022509
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22





	Elven Glory, Dwarven Pride

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blarfkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blarfkey/gifts).



> Set in the Girl with the Arrow Tattoo Universe - not GwtAT compliant.

Maria Cadash hasn’t been quite the same since the arrival and abrupt departure of Bianca Davri. 

Solas is not the only one to notice the change in her, or the sudden cooling of her relationship with Varric Tethras. Everyone can sense the shift in the atmosphere, the sudden bleeding wound in their midst. He suspects they all try to heal it as much they can. Dorian, annoyingly, is privy to all the details of the dramatic heartbreak. Solas can tell simply by the piercing glances thrown Varric’s way and the fireballs that always seem to come just within mere inches of Varric’s chest hair in battle. 

Sera becomes even noisier. Bull plies her with sweets and alcohol in turn. Cole brings her tiny presents of shiny rocks and flowers while spending hours attempting to untangle the chaotic jumble in Varric’s head. 

But Solas knows that sometimes the best medicine for sorrow is simply to occupy yourself in silence until it passes. Which is why he says nothing when she insists on accompanying him on this hike to one of the great Elvhen ruins that dot Thedas. The only remaining vestiges of the world he destroyed. 

In truth she will only be a hindrance. He needs to know if the veil is weaker or stronger in these ancient places because of the magic that infuses them, a task he cannot fully explain to her, but he cannot tell her no. Especially since the further she gets from their camp, the more herself she seems. 

He has missed the smile that tugs at the corner of her lips, the bright light of curiosity when she ducks around the crumbling stone walls to explore. He has even missed the way she asks questions and pauses, waiting for his answer to carefully consider. 

She calls him a nerd, wrinkling her nose with affection when she does so, but he knows in her heart she too would study the day away quietly if given the choice. 

There is a world, somewhere, where perhaps she does. A world where no weight hangs on her shoulders, a place where no evil would ever dare lay a finger on her, and no man would dare consider another more worthy of his affections than she. 

Varric Tethras is a blind fool. A child torn between two playthings, jealously refusing to choose. The stunning woman who has turned the world upside down, who has shocked Solas at every turn with her wisdom and grace, who has foiled his plans by sheer luck and survived against the inevitable odds over and _over_ again deserves more. 

More than Varric is prepared to give, certainly. And more than Solas _can_ give. 

But he can offer this reprieve, this moment to catch her breath in peace with just him at her side in the ruins of his worst mistake. 

“What do you think this was?” Maria asks, trailing small fingers along faded frescos in the dim light of their lantern. 

“A temple, I suspect.” Although, in truth, he knows. “These murals are of the Evanuris, the Elven Gods. This was a place to honor and revere them, to celebrate their gifts and pray to avoid their wrath.” 

Maria makes a small noise in her throat. To her, it is all legend and stories. She was not there, she doesn’t know the sight of thousands kneeling, ready to serve and die for those they believe to be a god. It is something unfathomable to her. 

A cynical part of him asks how long it would remain that way. After all, they call her the Herald of Andraste, and that power is heady. He has seen so many fall under its spell. 

She eyes the murals critically, head tipped to the side, ignorant of his consideration of her soul. Then she smirks slyly and shoots him a look from the corner of her eye.

“If that’s why you’re painting murals in Skyhold, Solas, you can shove it. We’re enough of a cult as is.” 

Her irreverent response surprises a small laugh from within him, but in truth it isn’t shocking. No matter what he wishes to believe, he knows her well enough to be certain she is made exactly as he is. 

She too has no great lust for power, she only took what was thrust upon her and decided to do with it what she could. Like him, she would relinquish it all in a moment if only she was allowed to do so. If only there was no battle to fight or wrongs to correct. 

It would be easier to hate her if she coveted it. As it is, he can’t hate her. He’s _never_ been able to hate her. 

Instead, he has foolishly fallen in love with his fiercest enemy. If there is a Maker, Solas has no doubt he is laughing. 

“What’s this bit here?” she asks, pointing at the peeling paint. 

It’s far below his eyeline, below even hers, so he has no choice but to kneel down to get a better look. He settles on his knees beside her, following her gaze to trace the delicate Elven figures.

The _nude_ Elven figures. 

“Ah,” he starts, fighting off the rising embarrassment. “That is the marriage of June and Sylaise.”

“Solas,” Maria begins, and he doesn’t have to look at her to hear the wicked laughter underneath her words. “Are you telling me that’s some ancient Elven fucking?” 

“It is a demonstration of fertility and-” 

“ _Solas_.” 

“Yes,” he admits, unable to stop his own lips from twitching with suppressed amusement. “They are indeed having intercourse.” 

“Having- for fuck’s sake, Solas. Have you brought me to an ancient Elven sex temple?” She sounds utterly delighted, the first time she’s sounded so carefree in weeks. 

“It is not a ‘sex temple’, this is merely an important event in the pantheon and thus was recorded accordingly.” He tries to keep his cool, professional demeanor even as it unravels under her gleeful scrutiny. 

“Recorded _explicitly_ , you mean?” she taunts. 

“So it seems,” he agrees, turning away from the mural to examine her flushed cheeks. She’s close enough to touch, and with him kneeling stands of a height with him. Her deft fingers brush the dirt from the paint with great care. 

She shakes her head, the sorrow coming over her in another choking wave. He watches it extinguish the dancing light in her eyes, drain the color from her face. 

“Well, at least someone is getting laid.” 

He hates it, but more than that, he can’t bear it. 

“Maria-” he begins. She turns, expectant, waiting for him to speak. The words dry up in his throat, turn to dust that he chokes on. 

She has the most beautiful eyes he’s ever seen. Not just the color (the same silver shine of the moonlight on a lake), but the way they soften, the compassion and intelligence underneath them. 

Varric does not deserve her. Solas _certainly_ does not deserve her. 

But he can’t stop himself. He’s denied it too long and he, better than anyone else, knows that desire denied has more power than anyone wants to admit. 

It’s like he’s watching someone else’s long fingers cross the small space, but he feels her steady pulse thud unevenly the moment he runs them up her sensitive neck, over her jaw, tucking her crimson hair behind her ear. Her breath catches in her throat so loudly it may as well have been gunfire. 

“Solas?” His name is an uncertain question, but she doesn’t tell him to stop. 

So he doesn’t. 

His fingers tangle in her hair, another arm sweeps around her waist and hauls her closer. It’s effortless, she doesn’t put up any resistance to being caged against his chest, to the gentle pressure in her hair forcing her lips to his. 

Her mouth opens almost immediately and he slips his tongue past her lips like he’s dreamed of doing a thousand times. Her small fists reach for his chest and he has a moment where he thinks _now_ , now she will push him away, slap him, send him into the night like a wolf with his tail between his legs. 

Instead her fingers clutch at his sweater and pull him closer. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, the deal with the devil she is making, and he should stop. He _should_ stop. 

He pulls away and her eyes fly open. 

For a second he sees everything in there she keeps hidden. The tragic past, her grief, her loss, the yawning uncertainty of her life and the grit that keeps her going. It’s enough to shame him, the only thing that could make him loosen his hold. 

He may want her, but she is not his to want. 

“I’m sorry that was a-” 

Pain, sharp as a blade, lances through her unguarded eyes. The words are bitter when they drip from her tongue. “A mistake?” 

He can tell, immediately, it is not the first time this month a man has told her he’s made a mistake. “ _Aranel,_ I cannot.” 

Her fingers tighten in his sweater briefly before she forces herself to release him. She’s scrambling to put her mask up, he can see it in her eyes, and his heart aches with it. He has to soothe the wound he caused. 

“It is not you, I-”

“You don’t want me either,” she declares. “I get it.” 

Just like that, all the light from earlier is gone. She is a snarling, wounded thing and _he_ has caused it with his foolishness. 

“That is untrue.” He can’t let go of her, even as she pushes backwards against his embrace. “I want nothing more.” 

“ _Liar_ ,” she hisses. And she’s correct, but not about this. 

He cannot bear that she thinks she is right about _this_.

She struggles against his grip, but she hasn’t resorted to her full strength, so it’s effortless to hold onto her. Too easy to shove her against the murals of the gods he toppled, Andraste’s herald pressed against the peeling reminders of their greatness.

Except she is not Andraste’s, she is _his_.

When he captures her mouth again, despite the muffled protest she makes, he is _thoroughly_ staking his claim and he knows it. Her mouth parts for him again and he is ruthless about his explorations until her thrashing ceases, until she begins to kiss him back with chaotic desperation. 

They’re on the edge of the abyss, and she senses it too. She _must_. 

Her fingers scramble for the hem of his sweater, lifting it to scrape her nails down the muscles of his stomach at the same time her teeth find his lips. He draws back just enough to see the steely anger and demanding lust in her face. She’s throwing a gauntlet at him, waiting to see if he picks it up. 

His lip is swollen, the pain adding a delicious, throbbing edge to the desire in his veins. It extinguishes the last shred of uncertainty. 

Despite the aura of power she carries, she’s small enough that his fingers easily curl around both of her wrists when he wrenches her arms above her head. Her breath stutters in her chest, but she curves herself into his body, straining against his hold. 

All he can do is bend to her wishes, pressing filthy, bruising kisses to her jaw. He returns her nip with one of his own, to the delicate lobe of her ear, and he treasures the gasp that falls from her lips. His free hand ghosts along the supple curves of her body, the thin flannel she wears over her cotton t-shirt. When he reaches the hem and sneaks his long fingers beneath the fabric he feels her vibrate with all the moans she’s biting back. 

He wants to tear them free from her throat. Every last noise, every ounce of pleasure, every kiss, he wants it for _himself_. 

Her skin is searing hot beneath his touch. He drags his knuckles up her spine, pressing her more firmly into another kiss that’s got just the right touch of madness in it. Too much _need_ in it. 

It has been so long since he _needed_ , but now that he’s tasted her he’s realized how starved he’s been. 

Now that Solas has tasted her he needs _more_.

“Tell me,” he pants when he releases her lips. “Tell me what you wish.” 

“It’s not obvious?” she spits back. 

“I will have you confess it.” He scratches fine lines down the warm skin of her back. Her eyes are dark, stormy. Her lips close tight and she lifts one brow to stare him down, but she makes no move to escape his grip on her wrists. 

His laughter ghosts over her skin, and even though she tries to contain the delicious shiver she makes, it runs through her like lightning. He releases his grip from her wrists and instead tangles his long fingers within her much smaller ones. He traces his nose over the shell of her ear and whispers. “ _Aranel_.” 

She turns her chin, their noses brushing as she stares into his eyes. She whispers the word underneath her breath, eyes unfathomable. “Princess.” 

Varric’s way with words couldn’t be denied. “Princess. _Queen_. One whom we would serve without question, if you would only allow it.” 

For a moment that seems to last a thousand years, she only looks at him. The seconds stretch on long enough for him to imagine a world where she is the queen she should be, dressed in silks and satins, perched on a throne of stone in the glorious cities of the Dwarven Empire. 

It is what she should be, and he has stolen that from her as surely as he has stolen the future of his own people. 

Then she breathes out the one sentence he feels like he has waited for months to hear. “I’ll allow it.” 

He’s on her in a moment, far past the screaming in the back of his head that he must stop. He has wanted so long it’s shocking his fingers don’t tremble when he drops them to the button of her jeans. He releases her hand only to slide his up the warm expanse of her back until he finds the clasp of her bra. 

He almost burns through it in his desperation, but he manages to undo the delicate hooks even though she squirms into his touch, impatient and demanding. With her hands free, she’s back to her own furious explorations. Small, deft hands slip under his sweater. She slowly runs then up his torso, as if marvelling at how it goes on and on. 

And then, because she is a menace of the highest order, she scratches her blunt nails down his chest and lunges forward to capture the hiss that falls from his mouth. 

Something rips and clatters to the stone floor; he fears it’s the button to her jeans but in the moment he can’t find it in himself to care. Instead he meets her frenzied kiss with the same ruthless passion while he tugs her tight pants down her lush thighs. 

To remove them entirely, he has to lift her clean from her feet, but it’s easy to do. Her stuttered gasp as he picks her up as easily as a doll is music to his ears. He smirks and meets her wide-eyed admiration. 

“And here I’ve been making Bull carry all the heavy shit,” she murmurs. “You’ve been holding out.” 

In more ways than one, not all of them pleasant, but that is a conversation for later. 

“I have often thought of having you in my arms with the stone at your back, _Aranel_.”

She _shivers_. There’s a wicked smirk on her face as he bunches up her top in his hands and pushes it slowly up her abdomen. It’s easy to take the unhooked bra with it and tug it all over her head, leaving her in nothing but sinfully soft underwear in the brightest red he’s ever seen, second to her hair. 

“It’s probably sacrilegious to fuck me up against these murals,” she whispers. “But the floor is stone.” 

He’d almost forgotten. His eyes dart from her to the faded paint of the _glorious_ Evanuris she’s pressed against. He can identify them all and the tales of their greatest feats of hubris, the gifts they demanded, the wars they started. 

The Dalish would find it sacrilegious, but he knows better. And there is nothing he wants more than to defile this temple with his Dwarven lover. 

“Perhaps I wish to sin, _Aranel_ ,” he growls, sinking his teeth into her shoulder until she whimpers. Her own hands turn frantic, pushing up his sweater until he breaks away and soothes the bright marks of his teeth with his tongue. 

He allows her to push it away, but before she can reach for his pants he lifts her onto her toes with long fingers curling into the plush bottom he’s been following across Thedas for months. He dips his chin to capture one of those tempting breasts in his mouth. 

Her moan is sweeter than any prayer ever sent to the Evanuris. She scrambles to cling to his shoulders, arching into his greedy mouth. Solas loses himself in the soft sounds of her pleasure, the way her skin tastes on his tongue, the jerky movements of her hips as she searches for any friction to give her sweet relief. 

Solas is so lost in her, he misses the careful fingers caressing his jaw until they travel up the pointed lobe of his ear. The sensitive skin _aches_ for her touch, sends jolts of pleasure right to the hardening length in his pants. 

Then she tweaks it and his teeth sink into her nipple in a way that tears a sharp, pleased cry from her swollen lips. “ _Solas!_ ”

His name in this temple, in her mouth. Perhaps he could stay like this forever, perhaps it is enough.

It’s a dream, of course, but all of it feels like a trick of the Fade. He releases her breast and lifts her up the plaster in one smooth movement as he gains his feet. Maria’s skin is flushed beneath her freckles, her chest rising and falling, and it takes only the lightest brush of his fingers against her core for her to keen his name again to all the Elven Gods in this cursed place. 

Her underwear is already damp. When his fingertips sink beneath the thin material, his breath freezes in his chest. 

“Don’t soddin’ tease me, Solas, I swear to my Ancestors I will-” she begins, only silenced when he draws his fingers down her slick slit. 

He laughs, pushing the material roughly to the side. He’s too far gone himself to draw this out, but he will. Perhaps he will have her on the stone as well, perhaps there is an altar he can place her on and clean his spend from her thighs. Now that he’s had her, he knows he cannot stop. 

He knows he doesn’t want to. 

It takes only a second to free his own cock. He slides it against her folds and she whines, nails sinking into his shoulders. “I want to fill you, _Aranel_. I want to take you and have you shatter around me.” 

“What are you _fucking_ waiting for then?” she demands against his chest, her breath rapid and heavy. 

He hooks her thighs over his arms, supporting her easily, and presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Only you, Maria. I have been waiting for you.” 

Before she can respond, he angles his hips to slowly begin to slide inside her. He is… familiar enough with Dwarven anatomy to know she has probably had lovers with more girth. _But_ he knows his length is filling her in a way she’s never had, reaching into her until she sobs, overloaded with sensation, clinging to him. 

When he’s finally hilted, he stops and closes his eyes, feeling her muscles clench and quiver. It has been too long, far too long, and she deserves more than he can give. “I’m not going to last.” 

“Then fuck me,” she pleads. “Solas, _please_ , fuck me.” 

He is helpless before her. He always has been. He rocks back only to thrust forward, drawing another cry from her lips that rings through the once holy halls. It is everything he has ever wanted, a chorus of whimpers, moans, her sultry voice urging him on while her nails sink into his shoulders.

He adjusts just enough to brush his fingers against her clit and she shatters just as he wished. Her screams are sweet, sweeter still for the way they carry _his_ name past the murals of his enemies. He snarls and snaps his hips faster, fucking her until the paint falls off the crumbling walls, until the only thing coming from her is half-coherent pleas. 

His own orgasm overtakes him like a wave, so intense he swears for a moment he is dragged back to a time where he’d have fucked her in the grand halls of Orzammar away from all her simpering nobles. 

A time when he was the Dread Wolf. 

“Solas,” she gasps, wrapping her arms around him. “Solas, I-” 

“ _Aranel_ ,” he whispers, dropping his nose to her hair, greedily inhaling the soft scent of citrus clinging to her.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispers, so soft he almost misses it. 

It’s an arrow in his heart. He swallows the bile in his throat and closes his eyes. 

“I will not,” he whispers. “I swear.” 

It’s a promise he will keep at all costs.

**Author's Note:**

> Fine Dwarven Smut Direct from Pornzammar at [@cartadwarfwithaheartofgold](https://cartadwarfwithaheartofgold.tumblr.com/)


End file.
